Media Exam Notes

Taufiq Zainal

 

Cinema Verite

 

Cinema Verite is a French term meaning 'Film Truth', translated from the term Kino pravada used by the Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov in the 1920s.

 

Cinema Verite is closely related to actuality in that it involves filming real people in real situations. Film directors of the Cinema Verite movement aimed for a sense of spontaneity and authenticity in their films. They used lightweight, hand-held cameras and portable sound equipment that were unobtrusive and did not overawe the subjects. They also used non-actors, shot everything on location and did not follow a script.

 

Because the cameras were kept running in the hope that a good story would emerge, an enormous amount of footage ended up on the cutting room floor. This made it comparatively expensive, even using cheaper film formats, because film (unlike video) is not re-usable.

 

While the camera recorded events as they unfolded, the raw footage had to go through heavy processes of selection in the editing room. This meant that the final film was still a version of reality, rather than reality itself. The simplicity and convenience of video recording equipment saw a resurgence of Cimema Verite. Like actually filming, Cinema Verite is used as a technique within conventional documentaries adding a sense of immediacy when someone unexpected is captured oncamera.

 

Cinema Verite Example: Matt Reeves' Cloverfield (2008)

 

Expressionism

 

Expressionism is the movement that became popular in Europe in the early 20th century and it influenced all of the arts including literature and music. Early expressionists chose to abandon realism in their work and instead sought to express themselves and their view of the world through their art.

 

Similarly, expressionism in film is a style of filmmaking more concerned with expressing abstract feelings, moods and emotions than using the codes of realism. Instead they used techniques designed to emphasise the starkness of the setting or the disturbed nature of the characters, and to throw the viewer off balance. Stories involve damaged people caught up in unfriendly environments, and they seldom have happy endings. Alienation and fear are expressed through the artistic distortion of codes such as exaggerated camera angles, deep depth of field, low-key lighting and deep shadows.

 

The first expressionist films were made in Germany following the first World War. One film that we've studied in class is the 1927 film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang. It raises the issues about the alienation of workers in a world dominated by machines and those who control them.

 

It has been claimed that these early films were making a statement about the social turmoil in Germany following the war and fear of the rising Nazi Party. They certainly paved the way for the horror genre and the expressionist techniques used in these early films continue today in horror, film noir, and in films and TV series based on the invasion of earth by 'others'.

 

Lang was expressing his own pessimism about the social upheaval and the uncertain future of their country, and the symbolism they used in their films often carries a strong political message.

 

Film Noir

 

Film Noir is a French term meaning dark or black film. It is used to describe a particular style of downbeat suspense film that grew out of the expressionist movement.

 

The noir style became popular in the US in the 1940s and 50s, perhaps reflecting the uncertainty cause by the second World War, the Cold War and the McCarthy attacks on Communism that resulted in the suppression of civil liberties.

 

Film noir tends not to have traditional heroes.


  • Male protagonists are flawed characters - sometimes hard-bitten cynics, sometimes naive men caught up in a web of circumstances that cause their lives to spin out of control.
  • Noir women are most often in the 'femme fatale' mould - tempting, seductive but seldom trustworthy.
  • Film noir borrows from the detective and gangster genres, and the dark, pessimistic themes explore the shadowy lives of amoral people in urban settings.
  • Plots involve crime, scams, twists and double crossings, and neat happy endings are not obligatory.

Film Noir Example: Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982)


Expressionism vs Film Noir

The term film noir was first coined by French film critics in August 1946 to describe a daring and stylish new type of Hollywood crime thriller, films such as The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, Laura and Murder, My Sweet. Standard histories describe film noir as a synthesis of hard boiled crime fiction and German expressionism. The term is also associated, James Naremore writes in ‘More Than Night: Film Noir and its contexts’, “with certain visual and narrative traits, including low  key photography, images of wet city streets and romantic fascination with femme fatales.”

Film noir's aesthetics are deeply influenced by German Expressionism, a cinematic movement of the 1910s and 1920s closely related to contemporaneous developments in theater, photography, painting, sculpture, and architecture. The opportunities offered by the booming Hollywood film industry and, later, the threat of growing Nazi power led to the emigration of many important film artists working in Germany who had either been directly involved in the Expressionist movement or studied with its practitioners. Directors such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Michael Curtiz brought dramatic lighting techniques and a psychologically expressive approach to mise-en-scène with them to Hollywood, where they would make some of the most famous of classic noirs. Lang's magnum opus, M - released in 1931, two years before his departure from Germany - is among the first major crime films of the sound era to join a characteristically noirish visual style with a noir-type plot, one in which the protagonist is a criminal (as are his most successful pursuers).

Political Propaganda Example: Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935)


Codes and Associated Conventions

Media mediate reality via the use of recognised codes and conventions, and the credibility or realism of a media text may be judged by the degree to which the audience identifies with what is being portrayed. Media students identify three categories of codes that may be used to convey meanings in media messages: technical codes, which include camera techniques, framing, depth of field, lighting and exposure and juxtaposition; symbolic codes, which refer to objects, setting, body language, clothing and colour; and written codes in the form of headlines, captions, speech bubbles and language style. 
 
  • The media produces meaning by using conventions
  • Audiences produce meaning from the interaction of the conventional material in the text, and their understanding of conventions
  • The conventions that the media uses have a history - they come from somewhere and they are responsive to historical forces
  • Conventions are not natural but are cultural - they have cultural specificities - they are now somewhat universal. 
  • The systems of codes that make up the convention can be clumped together under three broad headings - technical, symbolic, verbal/written. 

Since it is the case that the codes we use are the result of conventions arrived at by the users of those codes, then it is reasonable to suppose that the values of the users will in some way be incorporated into those codes.

They will, for example, have developed signs for those things they agree to be important, they will probably have developed a whole array of signs to draw the distinctions between those things which are of particular significance in their culture. In other words, you might reasonably expect that the ideologies prevalent in those cultures will have been incorporated into the codes used.

Social Values and Representations

  • Social values are partly based in reality and partly aspirational.
  • Social values may or may not reflect people’s bahaviour but always reflect belief. 
  • Media products are crafted to suit an audience, they must reflect the basic beliefs and values of the target market or that market will not buy the product. 
  • Most media texts support dominant social values and as such are a cleverly crafted amalgam of cosy familiarity and fantasy.
  • Texts that challenge social values are less common although they proliferate in times of social upheaval and uncertainty.

Social Values may be one or more of the following: 

  • Dominant
  • Traditional 
  • Emerging 
  • Subcultural 
  • Oppositional 

Stimulus Material

Black Book Trailer: Draws on the conventions of Film Noir. The film was originally created for European audiences however in this trailer codes and written text has been used to engage Western Audiences specifically. It is a historical fiction, and so it features easily recognisable symbols such as the Sawastika are used to lend credibility in the film. The depiction of sexual power and female empowerment also represents westernisation of the media and the necessity to texts to conform to audiences expectations over cultural contexts. In the heavily patriarchal regime of Nazism, it is incredibly unlikely a female would be able to survive as loyalties to Hitler outweighed all others. However, modern audiences prefer representations of love and female triumph.

Spider-man 3 Trailer: It appeals to young males that generally hold western values and enjoy the action genre. The linear format of the trailer has been taken to outline the plot and characters for the target audience. The audio drum beat is forbidding, and creates the sense that "something" is coming. It is very fast paced and excites the audience.

Surf's Up Trailer: Makes use of CGI (computer generated images) to produce the trailer. Without this technology, it would have had to be made using traditional hand-drawn animation. Every character in this film varies in their representation of our cultural, social and political values. The body of penguines in Antarctica and what seems to be Hawaii appears to function under an Americanised democracy. The characters are personified, which portrays and defines a number of stereotypes.